First published in October, 1990

On the charge of sexual misconduct leveled against Oregon Senator Bob Packwood, the Senate Ethics Committee found in his diaries 18 cases of groping, kissing and propositioning, the worst of which read like sexual assault. Here are some of the entries as leaked to us by a molested female staffer.

10/2/89: Dear Diary:

The timber bill comes up for a vote today. Environmentalists would string me up by my balls if I let the lumber companies cut more virgin forest and my constituents will lose jobs if don’t. The logger’s lobbyist is coming over later to lay out their case. Maybe I can get her to lay out my log, which is seven inches of prime spruce. The great thing about this kind of logging is once you cut it down, it grows back in a couple of days. Har-har-har.

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Today I sniffed                
Many dogs behinds - I celebrate
By kissing your face.          

Lie belly-up
In the sunshine, happier than
You will ever be.

I lift my leg and
Greet each bush. Hello, Spot -               
Sniff this and weep.

My human is home!
I am so ecstatic I have
Made a puddle.

Look in my eyes and
Deny it. No human could
Love you as much as I do.

The cat is not all bad
She fills the litter box
With tootsie rolls.

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After the warm rain
the sweet smell of camellias.
Did you wipe your feet?

Her lips near my ear,
Aunt Sadie whispers the name
of her friend's disease.

Looking for pink buds
to prune, the old moyel
wanders among his flowers.

Today I am a man.
Tomorrow I will return
to the seventh grade.

Harsh Scrabble discord--
someone has placed "putzhead" on
a triple word score.

Testing the warm milk
on her wrist, she sighs softly.
But her son is forty.

The sparkling blue sea
reminds me to wait an hour
after my sandwich.

Tea ceremony--
fragrant steam perfumes the air.
Try the cheese danish.

Lacking fins or tail
the gefilte fish swims with
great difficulty.

Yom Kippur-- Forgive
me, Lord, for the Mercedes
and all that lobster.

My nature journal --
today, I saw some trees and birds.
I should know the names?

Like a bonsai tree,
your terrible posture at
my dinner table.

Beyond Valium
the peace of knowing one's child
is an internist.

Jews on safari --
map, compass, elephant gun,
hard sucking candies.

Coroner's report --
"The deceased, wearing no hat,
caught his death of cold."

The same kimono
the top geishas are wearing:
got it at Loehmann's.

The sparrow brings home
too many worms for her young.
"Force yourself," she chirps.

Jewish triathlon:
gin rummy, then contract bridge,
followed by a nap.

"Can't you just leave it?"
the new Jewish mother asks -
umbilical cord.

The shivah visit:
so sorry about your loss.
Now back to my problems.

Our youngest daughter,
our most precious jewel.
Hence the name, Tiffany.

Mom, please! There is no
need to put that dinner roll
in your pocketbook.

Seven-foot Jews in
the NBA slam-dunking!
My alarm clock rings.

Concert of car horns
as we debate the question
of when to change lanes.

Sorry I'm not home
to take your call. At the tone
please state your bad news

Is one Nobel Prize
so much to ask from a child
after all I've done?

Today, mild shvitzing.
Tomorrow, so hot you'll plotz.
Five-day forecast-feh

Left the door open.
for the Prophet Elijah.
Now our cat is gone.

Yenta. Schmeer. Gevalt.
Shlemiel. Shlimazl. Tochis.
Oy! To be fluent!

Quietly murmured
at Saturday services,
Yanks 5, Red Sox 3.

A lovely nose ring --
excuse me while I put my
head in the oven.

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Luciano Vincenzoni, one of the writers who brought us such spaghetti westerns as The Good, The Bad and the Ugly and For A Few Dollars More is writing a film on the life of Puccini.

The following scene dramatizes a little known meeting between Puccini and Ruggerio Leoncavallo.

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I was in the mood for a nice, romantic movie, one of those great love stories that Hollywood used to grind out so proficiently in the past. The formula was classic — boy-meets-girl, boy-loses-girl, boy-gets-girl, the-end. You went home knowing that our lovebirds lived happily-ever-after. These movies — they weren’t films, they were movies — always made you cry and feel good at the same time,

My quest led to Hollywood. Who better to describe the latest in love story flicks than the people who make them? I learned that the classic boy-meets-girl, boy-loses-girl, boy-gets-girl story is laughably obsolete in the sophisticated, pop culture we’re currently enjoying and doesn’t speak to the contemporary romantic experience.

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Report From Canada: March 2, 2002

Perhaps Prime Minister Jean Chretien was right when he originally balked at sending 2000 Canadians and various military equipment to Afghanistan, saying that he didn’t want to send his troops “where they’re not wanted.” Then again, perhaps someone should inform Mr. Chretien that the the military is supposed to go where they’re not wanted. Otherwise they’d be tourists.

The single-minded Chretien then added that he wanted Canada to bring “peace and happiness” to countries his troops were assigned to, again missing the point of military intervention.

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Washington lit the mother of all trees on the White House lawn last week, officially launching the season of cheer. If you remember, this is the tree that used to be called The National Christmas Tree, but was renamed The Holiday Tree during the Clinton years. Since so many Christians and non-Christians have been calling these delightful evergreens Christmas Trees for hundreds of years, I got to wondering what made this one different.

With curiosity nipping at my toes I did a little investigating and learned that the Clintons had renamed the tree in the spirit of inclusion and good will to all men, women, transgenders and sexual-ambivalents who weren’t Christians because of fragment 3872-J.

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Del Monaco

When my son, Mario, was three years old I heard a troubling raspiness in his voice, to me an ironic condition because his full Christian name is Mario del Monaco Boni, after the great Italian singer, Mario del Monaco, whose death almost twenty-five years ago on October 16 closed the chapter on that rare operatic creature — the heroic tenor.

Mario had not yet been born when I visited his namesake at his villa in Lancenigo just four months before he died. There I discovered that in a small way I had touched the life of a boyhood hero who had touched my own so enormously.

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